where Sandy talks about things

Main menu

Student Loans

Because I am not independently wealthy and because I attended law school in the 2000s, I have some student loans. Generally I just accept this as a fact of life – I wish I didn’t have to pay, obviously, but I’m lucky in that I can afford the payments, so I make them with minimal complaint.

I got a call the other day from the student loan people, and at first I just assumed I’d forgotten to schedule my payment. Since Ben is a mail carrier we try to pay most of our bills by mail, but a few years ago I ran into what I ultimately suspect is an issue with the Harrisburg post office wherein I would mail my payment in a timely fashion and it would take upwards of three weeks to get to this loan servicer, necessitating DAILY calls to me AND to my mom, who cosigned the loans, inquiring when I was planning to pay. So now I pay that bill online.

It turns out that my payment amount went up by approximately $30 between the time I had scheduled my payment and the time the payment came due. So the fact that my payment was $30 short necessitated a call to me AND to my mom, inquiring when I was planning to pay. At first I was just going to pay the additional amount when my next payment was due but I realized that would put me AND my mom on the daily call schedule, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

Jumping right on the bandwagon for this meme.

So I paid the $30 extra, scheduled my next payment, and gave them a piece of my mind about how they shouldn’t be threatening to garnish my wages and send me to collections for $30 that was literally 10 days overdue.

I wish I had the option of paying them off and taking my business elsewhere, but that is not a financial option at this point. The other student loan people I have (for I have two loans, lucky me) are totally nice and send me little reminder letters like “we know you’re busy but you forgot to pay us this month, idiot, so please go ahead and send us a check now.” That’s reasonable. This garbage is ridiculous.